


twenty four hours makes a day

by Hueyhuey



Series: big bad bright fireworks [9]
Category: Daredevil (Comics), Daredevil (TV), Deadpool - All Media Types, Spider-Man - All Media Types
Genre: Alcohol, Crying, Dead dads, Father's Day, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Matt's got good shoulders to cry on, Peter Parker Needs a Hug, Sad Peter Parker, Team Red, Wade Wilson's Fuckin Sad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-19
Updated: 2020-07-19
Packaged: 2021-03-04 17:40:54
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,215
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25370290
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hueyhuey/pseuds/Hueyhuey
Summary: Peter tucks himself further inside his cocoon of blankets. “It’s Father’s Day.”Yeah, Pete.Sure is.(Matt runs some interference when Father's Day sneaks up on the rest of the team.)
Relationships: Matt Murdock & Franklin "Foggy" Nelson, Matt Murdock & Peter Parker, Matt Murdock & Wade Wilson
Series: big bad bright fireworks [9]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1543033
Comments: 6
Kudos: 232





	twenty four hours makes a day

**Author's Note:**

> Y'all I'm well aware that father's day happened a month ago, but i wasn't Thinkin About this until like last week. so forgive me. This is just a short lil look into the teams thoughts while I wrap up some other stuff.

Matt’s in the middle of a tetchy debate with Foggy over a particularly divisive client when Peter’s aunt calls.

It’s a Sunday afternoon and Matt’s a little miffed that he’s having to spend most of it half-yelling about ethical minutiae in Foggy’s living room. They’re deep into the conversation and it’s getting heated. Matt’s started using hand gestures to emphasize his points, which is an old habit he tends to lean on when he gets passionate about something. He picked it up in law school when he discovered that it worked as a good distraction to pull people’s attention away from his face.

Sunshine warms his left side from a window next to the couch. Foggy is standing, fucking around with a legal pad and a pen in an attempt to parse out a list of pros and cons so that they can come to an agreement. It’s going poorly.

The phone’s sing-song voice intones, “May Parker,” several times from the kitchen. Foggy’s tone is sour when he sends Matt to get it.

Matt plods into the kitchen and picks it up. May doesn’t give him any room for a hello. As soon as the receiver’s to his ear, she’s gushing, “--am so busy, having to pull a double shift and I don’t have the time or patience for everyone to be ignoring my calls. Can you check in on Peter for me?”

She sounds a little frantic. There’s substantial background noise; Matt deduces that she’s probably calling from work. He replies, “Whoa there, slow down. What’s going on?”

May takes a deep breath. “Peter’s having a really hard time with today and I’m worried that he’s going to do something stupid. He stopped answering my texts and I’ve called his friends and they all say he’s not responding to them either.”

“What’s today?”

Someone comes up to May on her side of the call and she pulls away from the phone mic to tell them something and make shooing noises. When she returns, she responds, “Father’s Day. He’s always been weird about it, but it’s gotten worse since--well, you know. It’s been a couple of years since Ben died, but I’ve always been able to take off from work. I’ve never not been there to distract him.”

Foggy pads into the kitchen, curious. Matt gives him a head toss and a thumbs up and that deters him for the time being. “I can be in Queens in a little over an hour. Is he at your apartment?”

May releases a flood of air like she’s loosening a pressure valve. “Yes. Thank you so much. I didn’t know who to call.”

Matt leans against his hand on the counter. He says, “No problem. I’ll head over now.”

May thanks him again and hangs up.

Matt’s stomach twists. He’d forgotten it was Father’s Day. 

He hopes against hope that Peter’s okay.

The apartment is quiet when Matt knocks lightly on the door. It’s quiet when he tries the knob after a couple of minutes and quieter still when he tracks down the spare key tucked behind a deceptively loose door frame and nudges the door open.

It’s cold inside. The air is still.

Peter’s sitting in the living room. Swallowed up by a big bucket seat and a pile of blankets.

He watches Matt close the door. Waits while he shrugs off his church suit jacket and feels his way to a chair across from the bucket.

Peter tucks himself further inside his cocoon of blankets. “It’s Father’s Day.”

Yeah, Pete.

Sure is.

“Aw, fuck, kid. C’mere. Don’--don’ cry.”

Course, that starts the water works right up.

Matt gets up to go kneel beside Peter’s half-baked chrysalis made of sadness.

He pulls Peter and his blankets into his chest and squeezes ‘em real tight.

Peter’s heart breaks in two and comes out in cascades of tears, in waves of debilitating sobs. Matt rubs his back until he cries himself out.

It takes about an hour. Peter’s become a vacuum in the years since Ben’s loss and his attempts to fill that indelible void with pillows and ice cream have failed rather spectacularly, so he’s got a lot of tears to cry.

The kid is a good crier. He’s never been ashamed of it. He’s never tried to hide it from Matt, and certainly not from Wade.

Ergo, Matt’s been witness to Peter Tears before. These are, for the most part, angry or desperate or righteous, at least when they’re shed in Matt’s presence. There have been tears from pain--those are usually indistinguishable from sweat and masked by blood or bodily fluids. There have been tears of laughter and some of excitement.

The tears Peter sobs into Matt’s shirtfront now are sad and nothing else. They are grief expressed in its purest form. They are lonely and they are world-weary: profoundly, heavily sorrowful. They hurt Matt’s heart to absorb. 

There are no words or curses interspersed within these tears. Only the occasional open-mouthed, body-shaking, silent scream which disintegrates underneath another wave of hiccups and sobs.

Matt holds him and rocks a little and hums very softly.

It’s Father’s Day and this baby has so much forlorn aching built up inside because no father figure or male role model will ever be able to replace the original one.

Matt knows this. He’s well studied on the thesis of Peter’s tears. 

His daddy’s six feet under too, and a good two decades deader than Ben Parker. Hell, Jack Murdock was well-rotted by the time Peter’s first daddy got laid in the dirt, let alone his second.

Matt’s father’s grave is eroded by time and pain and the relentless degradation of a resentful, ungrateful world. But there are always fresh flowers sitting in the vase beside it.

Good ones. With a smell that’s not too strong and petals real soft. Softer than anything his daddy ever got handed in life. Sometimes Matt’ll leave a fresh thing of bourbon, but he doesn’t like to do that too often because drunks will sometimes pick it up and disturb other graves in the cemetery. 

Matt doesn’t know where or if or for how long Ben’s been buried, but he bets wherever or whatever it is gets kept up real nice, too. May and Peter seem like those kinds of people.

The ones who keep the memories of their lost loved ones safe and sound on the inside and also on the outside.

Old wounds don’t ever really heal. Not ones as deep and affecting as these. Always gotta keep ‘em clean. To prevent infection.

Matt wonders briefly what kind of gangrenous filth grows over Wade’s father’s burial site.

Peter pauses in his crying to catch his breath. Matt can tell where the kid’s diaphragm is tensing around a cramp in his side. He pulls away from the hug and crosses to the kitchen to pour a glass of water for Peter.

Peter sniffles and wipes at his face with his overlong sleeves. Matt feels his way to the closest bathroom for a box of tissues. He returns to the kid in the bucket with an offering of water and kleenex.

Kleenex wins out. Peter blows his nose and Matt’s ears ring at the scrape of fibrous paper against irritated skin. Then the kid gulps down most of the water in one go and gasps at the end like he’s just re-learned how to breathe.

Matt lowers himself to the floor and crosses his legs and waits patiently. Peter’s breath stutters and he finishes off the water.

“You wanna talk?” Matt asks.

Peter takes another big, deep breath. Matt hears the creak of ribs as his lungs expand. He replies, “I just--I miss ‘im so much an’ it hurts so bad all the time.” 

His voice sounds strung out. Empty and hollowed out from wear. It catches on the consonant sounds at the ends of his words.

Matt takes off his glasses to fidget and responds, “Sucks, huh.”

Peter nods emphatically. He reaches to grab an abandoned blanket on the armrest beside him and tosses it to Matt, then bunches up the one under his chin.

“How did you--I dunno. Cope? After your dad died? If you don’t mind talkin’ about it.”

Oh, hon.

That’s not a good path to follow.

That’s an orphan’s path. A blind orphan with a horde of demons chomping at his heels and a devil pounding away in his blood. 

Hmm. How to abridge that. Where to start.

“Well, I was a good few years younger than you were. And newly blind. And I remember the first time I’d bloodied my knuckles for real had been the week before. Ran headfirst into a brick wall and got so pissed that I punched it ‘til I bled.”

Peter hiccups out a little giggle. Matt continues: “They put me in a group home-convent-orphanage that was associated with my church--that’s the one I’ve told you ghost stories about. They hated me, kicked me into foster care as soon as I stirred up trouble. I didn’t mesh with that shit at all, so I went back.”

“But how did you deal with the loss of your dad? Like, separate from all that?”

Matt waves a dismissive hand at him. Says, “Context, kid. I’m laying out the foundation. It needs context.”

Spidey concedes and Matt goes on. “So. Spent the weeks right after my old man kicked it boppin’ around a million different courtrooms and gettin’ therapized by a million different social workers and counselors. I lacked a lot of the structure that you have with your aunt, so it took a long fucking time for the impact of what I’d lost to sink in.

“And then I didn’t deal with it when it finally hit me. I just shut down for months and then they sent me to foster care to see if that would help.”

It hadn’t. Peter seems to understand this.

“So by then I was hellbent on getting out of the system one way or another, and the most accessible way to do that was through college. And I repressed my shit through undergrad until Fogs got me drunk enough to have a breakdown in the dorm at Columbia.”

“And then?”

Well, dear pupil.

Ya see.

“Pete, I don’t think coping mechanisms are really my area of expertise. Mostly I bottle my grief up until I can take it out on the faces of violent criminals.”

Peter’s dissatisfied with that answer. His heart says this.

Matt chortles. “Hey, you’re the one askin’ Daredevil for advice on healthy ways to deal with emotional turmoil.”

Peter abandons the blanket to toss up his hands. “All my mentors and role models have the same answer! I don’t want to spend my life taking out his--Ben’s--death on other people. Who am I supposed to ask?” he cries.

“Toss that shit to your little Avenger clique. Ain’t the other Wilson a grief counselor?”

“Dude, he works with veterans.”

“Veterans have grief,” Matt reasons.

Peter sighs long-sufferingly, but there’s laughter behind it, which was Matt’s intention. He extricates himself from his bucket full of blankets and dried tears and goes to refill his water cup.

Matt thinks his gait is a little lighter, even if his heart’s still heavy.

Wade is, apparently, well aware that it’s Father’s Day. 

When Matt gets home, the apartment has that same cloying quality to it that Peter’s had at first. Like a dam about to break.

Wade’s not even in the apartment--Matt finds him in his designated Brooding Spot on the roof, nursing a bottle of something 80 proof and a hastily wrapped blunt.

Matt strolls over to the lip of the building, where Wade squats over a lighter, frustrated with the wind.

He sits. Passes when offered the blunt. Wade throws back some of the liquor and chases it with the stinking odor of tobacco and skunk.

“When’s the last time you got crossfaded?” Wade asks Matt’s shoes.

Matt thinks for a moment. “Gonna have to say sometime in college, buddy. I’m gettin’ old.”

Wade sneers and drawls, “Nah. Nahhh, not gettin’ old. Don’t got time for that. Just gettin’ responsible.”

Yeah. Matt nods.

“I do it every year. Get absolutely shit-tossed, I mean. Once a year. To celebrate my ol’ man.”

That so?

“Yessir. Then I take the butt of whatever I smoke and mail it to the old address in Canada so that fucker gets to smell exactly what it is I think of ‘im.”

Matt nods. He tries not to inhale too much of Wade’s funk. “Happy Father’s Day.”

Wade snorts and raises the bottle to the sky and yells, “Happy fuckin’ Father’s Day, you son of a bitch!”

He finishes off the bottle and slumps back in defeat. He offers the blunt to Matt again. As if he forgot he’d already done that. Matt waves it off.

Wade turns to look at Matt and says, “Sorry ‘bout your daddy, Red.”

Matt plays with the cuff of his church jacket. He nods in response. 

“Sucks.”

Yes, indeed.

But he gets through it. 

Peter’ll learn. Wade hangs in there.

Even when it sucks. It’s just one day. That’s how they’ve gotta bear it, one day at a time.

**Author's Note:**

> :) timelines are confusing and idk where this fits in really. Have a good one <3


End file.
